The next conference of the Institute of Australian Geographers will take place in Adelaide, 1-5 July, 2024. The overarching theme is "Scale, solutions & geographical futures".
We have the pleasure to announce that we will be organising one of the sessions ~ Scales of Radical Praxis! If you wanna help us guide this discussion, submit your abstract here.
Deadline ~ 25.03!
Scales of Radical Praxis
Alexandre Faustino | Nicolas Guerra | Corey Ferguson
Ana Lara-Heyns | Zheng Chin | Paloma Bugedo
Sessions will be blocks of two to three short presentations (approx. 10 min) followed by an open conversation between everyone in the room to discuss the practices, pedagogies, actions and provocations shared by presenters. (if conditions allow, we would like to facilitate some sessions outdoors).
The coordinators will organise live visual storyboarding during presentations and discussions, while also recording conversations to transcribe and quote. With the consent of participants, this material will be used by the coordinators to create a zine, edited following the conference, to be disseminated to participants and shared within their networks.
In an attempt to hold critical urban scholars accountable, Margit Mayer (2020) states that “We have enough facts, we know the threats, and the injustices are clear—but how to move forward now… What can be done?” (p.42). In her journal article: What does it mean to be a (radical) urban scholar activist, or activist scholar, today? She provokes us to act, how then should we respond?
As researchers, the neoliberal university is hostile towards scholars who engage in activist work (Flood, Martin & Dreher 2013). Yet, our desire to make the world more just and regenerative is what drives us to do what we do. Spaces to explore the tense alliances between activism and scholarship are rare, and the documentation (and legitimisation) of these discussions are rarer.
Therefore, through this session, we hope to prefigure conferences as spaces to explore how we - as critical urban scholars - engage in social change. We invite others to discuss with us the various scales of radical praxis and activist scholarship - to explore their transformative possibilities - and how we engage in acts of everyday resistance, collective efforts, grassroots activism, social mobilisations, civil disobedience and the creation of alternative institutions.